BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS AND MARTÍN KOPPEL
SAO PAULO, Brazil - "This strike is about our dignity and sovereignty," said Eduardo Jenner Ozório, an operator at the Petrobra's oil refinery in Cubatao, Brazil, located on the Atlantic coast some 50 miles east of here. Jenner gave an interview to the Militant May 30 through the steel gate that keeps the main entrance of the refinery shut. Strikers have been occupying the plant since May 2 when 47,000 unionists shut down 11 refineries around the country run by Petrobra's, the state-owned monopoly.
"As long as solidarity continues, we will stay out against all odds until at least some of our basic demands are met," Jenner stated. "Fernando Henrique Cardoso [Brazil's president] says the strike is about principles. Well, we'll stick by our principles." The oil workers oppose the government's plans to sell off shares of the company to private capitalists, lay off thousands of workers, and speed up production. They also demand the government abide by a contract it signed last September granting a wage increase.
As the walkout enters its second month, 85 percent to 90 percent of the workers remain on strike, according to the union. The big-business media claims only 11,000 unionists are still out.
"That's a bald-faced lie," Jenner said of these claims. "This is a class war. The government will do anything to give the impression we're being defeated. If 36,000 have broken ranks, what's all the clamor about the strike? Why use the army, the cops, their `justice system,' and all the media to crush a few losers?"
The ruling families of Brazil, alarmed that the determined resistance of the oil strikers is increasingly setting an example for millions of other workers and farmers, have unleashed the entire state machinery against the unionists.
"The government's plan against the strike includes stockpiling, dismissals, and use of the Supreme Labor Tribunal and troops," read a headline in the May 31 Veja, a weekly magazine published here.
On May 24 the government deployed nearly 2,000 soldiers and military police, who occupied four refineries in Mauá, Paulínia (the largest refinery in Latin America), and San José dos Campos in the state of Sao Paulo; and Araucária in the state of Paraná. The fourth Petrobra's refinery in the Sao Paulo area is occupied by the workers. The remaining six refineries in six other states are picketed by strikers.
Capitalist government officials and newspapers throughout South America hailed Cardoso's military move. "I am in total agreement with the firm attitude Cardoso showed, which is necessary to continue the process of economic transformation" of Brazil, declared Argentine president Carlos Menem, whose government has rammed similar measures down the throats of workers in that country. "I tell him: `Fernando, don't let up.' "
On May 27 Brazil's Supreme Labor Tribunal, which has twice declared the strike "illegal and abusive" and has ordered workers to return to their jobs, fined each of the 21 unions affiliated to the Federation of Oil Workers $110,000 a day for each day the walkout continues. The penalties, amounting to $2.3 million a day, are retroactive to the beginning of the strike.
The government also threatened to fire all Petrobra's employees who are not back on the job by June 1 - 30 days since the start of the strike.
On May 31 the oil workers at the Rio de Janeiro and Paulínia refineries voted overwhelmingly to continue the strike despite the threats of mass firings. A union leader at the Paulínia refinery informed management that "the threat of mass firings does not preoccupy us at all." The other striking locals are voting June 1 on whether to stay on the picket lines.
The capitalist rulers have also unleashed a major propaganda offensive against the workers. Daily articles, editorials, opinion columns, and cartoons, as well as hours of television news broadcasts and talk shows paint the strikers as well-paid employees who oppose "modernization" of an inefficient state-run monopoly at the expense of the vast majority of the population. Government officials are trying to use the hardships caused by rationing of the dwindling supplies of gasoline and cooking gas to undercut the prestige of the fighting workers. Photos of impoverished Brazilians standing in line to fill tanks of cooking gas appear on many front pages of newspapers.
Justice Minister Saulo Ramos accused strikers of endangering the health and welfare of others by "not making any provisions for having enough fuel for ambulances and vital industrial sectors."
Strikers at Cubatao reported that anonymous leaflets have circulated in industrial areas claiming that union officials are hoarding gasoline or liquid gas at the offices of the United Federation of Workers (CUT), the main union federation, to which oil workers are affiliated.
Workers counter propaganda
Several of the workers occupying the Cubatao refinery took
up the accusations peddled by the big-business media. "Ramos
has failed to cite a single case where a sick or elderly
person suffered because an ambulance could not get to them
because of lack of fuel," said Valter da Silva Reis, with 10
years in the refinery. "Plus, it's the government's
responsibility to make sure, through rationing, that
hospitals and emergency vehicles have enough fuel."
When Petrobra's began selectively firing union activists, workers responded by circulating a petition among the union membership demanding that all 47,000 employees be dismissed or no one. The response to this union counterpropaganda campaign has slowed down government efforts to carry out large-scale firings of union militants. So far, the company has fired 93 workers for strike-related activities.
The union has also produced flyers and placards with photocopies of workers' paychecks that show that their take- home pay ranges between $300 and $800 a month. The media often claim that the median wage of oil workers is $1,900. The union brochures contrast that to the salary of the governor of Sao Paulo who recently got the state legislature to grant his $38,000 a month.
The 400 workers who occupy the plant, which has a striking workforce of 1,500, do maintenance during the day to make sure the refinery is not damaged while the strike continues.
"We're in the vanguard of the struggle here," Jenner stated. He said unionists at Cubatao helped initiate the two previous national oil strikes in the last year. In September, refinery workers struck for a week and forced the government of former president Itamar Franco to sign an agreement with the union providing for a 12 percent wage increase.
When Franco reneged, oil workers struck again in November and the government promised to implement the accord progressively by May. At the beginning of the year, the newly elected Cardoso administration proclaimed the accord null and void because it "lacked a legal basis." Cardoso also announced plans to sell off Petrobra's to local or foreign investors and to cut the workforce.
"This strike is not just about pay," said Aelson Mota Brito. "Cardoso is imposing the same policies as the governments in Argentina, Mexico, and Bolivia. They're turning over our national patrimony to multinationals for the price of bananas. We're not going to let him do what Menem already accomplished."
"Our strength is in our numbers, our unity, and solidarity from other workers," Jenner added.
Solidarity movement
Leading up to the army occupation of the four refineries,
short walkouts in solidarity with the embattled unionists
were organized by dock workers, truckers, railworkers,
teachers, and others. This strike movement has slowed down
for the moment.
At Cubatao, however, the union organizes nightly plant- gate solidarity rallies from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. often attended by hundreds of workers.
The main entrance to the refinery is covered with banners. "We repudiate the military invasion of the refineries," reads one. "Mess with my comrades and you mess with me - electrical workers at Henry Borden plant back oil workers," reads another. To the right of the main gate, a coffin is stood up on the fence with a sign that reads: "Here lies the Supreme Labor Tribunal."
On the night of May 30, steelworkers from nearby Santos bring a truckload of food. Representatives of the bank workers union bring copies of a video they just made on the oil strike. They are using the video to spread the truth about the struggle and to raise funds for the strikers. Two members of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers report their group is organizing a solidarity march in the city of Itanuba.
After the messages of solidarity are read, Avelardo Meneses, the local president of the oil workers union, who is leading the occupation and the nightly rallies, reads the daily bulletin on the state of the strike and on solidarity actions around the country. The information is faxed in from the oil workers union headquarters. Strikers at all 11 refineries had voted to stay on the picket lines the day before.
Stefano Giuseppe Maria Narici, from the Paulínia refinery, receives the loudest applause when he brings news from the solidarity camp near his plant, which is occupied by the army.
As the rally winds down and the weather gets brisk, many workers outside the gate gather by one of the tents, which serves as a canteen for bread, coffee, and discussion on the events of the day.
"This is the longest and most important strike we've ever had," says Vicente Medosa de Lima, 72, who retired in 1988 after working 37 years in the plant. "I helped to found this union. And we're not about to back down."
`Valley of struggle'
The next morning two steelworkers drive Militant reporters
toward the huge Cosipa steel complex in Santos, a few miles
south of Cubatao. Both cities are in a coastal valley
surrounded by steep, lush mountains. The valley is dotted by
smokestacks spewing fumes from dozens of mills, fertilizer
plants, and plastics and cement factories.
"We call this `the valley of death' because of the tremendous pollution," the driver says. "But now it is becoming valley of struggle."
"Brazilian capitalists bought the Cosipa plant from the state in 1993," says Paulo Tavares dos Santos, communications director of the metal workers union in the region. "Since then, they cut the workforce from 15,000 to 10,000 and at the same time raised production to record levels. The result? Occupational accidents have increased. Ten workers were killed on the job last year."
"We support the oil workers because we were victims of the same policy they are facing now." Tavares says.
During the afternoon shift change, metalworker union activists distribute thousands of flyers on the oil strike to Cosipa employees. The flyers, stuffed in plastic bags, encourage workers to fill these bags with food and drop them at the plant gate the next morning for the oil strikers at Cubatao.
A union leader on a flatbed truck announces the campaign through loudspeakers to the thousands of office, maintenance, and production workers coming off shift and filling the 86 buses waiting to take them home.
Inside the mill, not everyone supports the strike. "I don't think the strike is just," said Marcos Ferrer, 21, who works at the plant kitchen and takes home $130 a month. "Those people at the refinery make a lot of money. What's in that strike for me?"
Reactions during the leafleting for the food collection at the plant gate were similarly divided among several workers Militant reporters spoke to.
"We still have a lot of work to do to win a solid majority on the side of the strikers," acknowledged Saulstiano Tavares do Santos, who has worked at Cosipa for 30 years. He said the union had to postpone plans for a solidarity work stoppage at the complex until more support is won. The union, he added, needs to address the concerns of low-paid workers by raising demands such as for a higher minimum wage, which now stands of $100 in Brazil.
Some 3,000 port workers at Santos, however, held a two- hour work stoppage in solidarity with the oil workers May 31.
`Working class is international'
A dozen steelworkers joined strikers and others for a
spirited plant-gate rally of 300 at the Cubatao refinery
later that evening.
Speakers included the president of the National Union of University Students, who brought a $3,000 check for the strike fund, and a state deputy from the Workers Party (PT).
A group of 10 high-school students from Santos were the loudest in cheering all announcements of new solidarity actions. "Today we spent the whole day in the street passing out flyers we made on the strike and collecting funds," said Rogerio Messias, 16, from the Municipal Union of High School Students. "The big majority of high school students in Santos support the strike."
Oil workers erupted in cheers when Dirceu Travesso, from the national executive committee of CUT, announced that dock workers in Rio de Janeiro had just decided to refuse to unload any shipments of imported oil derivatives during the strike.
"This strike is part of the same workers' struggles that are polarizing the continent," Travesso said. "In Mexico we had the Chiapas revolt. Now oil workers in Colombia and Venezuela are striking against the same kind of government policies as well."
The high point of the evening came when Felix López, a member of the Cuban Union of Young Communists (UJC) and reporter for the Cuban weekly Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth), addressed the assembly. López and two other UJC members had spent the day at the valley with metal and oil workers. The three are part of a delegation of more than 30 Cuban youth leaders visiting Brazil to talk about the Cuban revolution today.
"I come from a country that has no oil but that nationalized the foreign-owned refineries 36 years ago and since then they've been in the hands of the Cuban people," López told the crowd, drawing a boisterous ovation. "You can count on our support."
The strikers responded with repeated chants of "Brazil, Cuba, Central America; the working class is international."
To send messages of support, readers can contact the United Federation of Oilworkers (FUP) at: Ave. Passos, 34, 3 andar, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, CEP 20051-040. Tel: (21) 221-209. Fax: (21) 221-1266.